


over the noise (a single thought appears)

by ghastlyshilo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Control Chips, F/M, Ficlet, Handmaidens, Naboo Language, Rarepair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 12:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18739132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghastlyshilo/pseuds/ghastlyshilo
Summary: This is how the world ends.Rabé finds out about Fives' death.





	over the noise (a single thought appears)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [From Which Stars Have We Fallen, to Meet Each Other Here?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576703) by [evaceratops](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evaceratops/pseuds/evaceratops), [naberiie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naberiie/pseuds/naberiie). 



It was late at night when Rabé felt her heart skip a beat. Most of Coruscant’s residents were asleep by now, but the handmaidens had always kept strange hours, so she and her sisters were currently gathered in their little kitchen for a belated cup of tea. Which meant that when Rabé turned momentarily cold and her eyes glazed over, Sabé and Eirtaé saw.

“Something’s wrong,” Rabé said without thinking, in answer to Sabé’s immediate inquiry. It felt like a ludicrous understatement. The flash of cold had faded, but its echo clung to her bones, and a feeling of dread along with it. She shivered. Totally irrationally, she knew that something terrible had happened.

She was startled out of her daze when Sabé touched her arm. “Rabé? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” said Rabé, trying to keep her voice light. She quirked a smile, normally so easy, but now it felt foreign and uncomfortable. “It’s probably nothing.” She knew without looking at her sisters’ faces that she hadn’t fooled them any more than herself.

She excused herself at the earliest opportunity. Before getting into bed, she drew out her comlink and set it to Fives’ frequency. _Hello, teekoa,_ she wrote, using her nickname for him. He had asked her once what the Naboo word was for _five_ , and she had taken to calling him a plural version ever since. _It’s been a weird day. I have a bad feeling about something. Let me know you’re all right?_ She left it at that. It wasn’t the first time they’d sent each other that kind of message. They both lived on their own sort of frontline, and sometimes they needed reassurance. Rabé had never needed it more than she did at that moment, but as she climbed into bed, she had a horrible feeling that she wouldn’t get it.

For just over an hour, she lay with the comlink in her hand, trying to convince herself that Fives may very well be asleep and she shouldn’t expect him to answer before morning. She was just about to give in to her worry and send a message to Padmé – who had connections to General Skywalker and therefore the clones – when her comlink finally beeped. Her heart jumped into her throat and a smile broke across her face. But the message she found wasn’t from Fives.

_Rabé – Request meeting tomorrow at 0800. Urgent. – Rex_

The feeling of dread returned as Rabé answered that she would meet him.

≈

By 7:45 the next morning, Fives still hadn’t answered her. Rabé told herself that he was probably busy.

Sabé was already out by then, having thrown a concerned backward glance at Rabé as she left, and Rabé insisted that Eirtaé didn’t have to leave too. Whatever Rex had to tell her, she reasoned, it couldn’t be so top secret that Eirtaé couldn’t hear it as well. Eirtaé hadn’t looked convinced, but had agreed to stay. Of course, Rabé knew the real reason she wanted Eirtaé there, and she knew just as surely that Eirtaé knew, which was why they both sat so stiffly as they waited for Rex to arrive.

He knocked on the front door precisely on time, and Eirtaé was gracious enough to be the one to open it for him. Rabé stood politely as their guest entered, but as soon as she saw him coming into the living room, she knew her suspicions were confirmed. He looked like he had gotten even less sleep last night than Rabé had, and he walked as though he carried the world on his shoulders.

Rabé sat down a little too quickly. “Rex,” she said breathlessly, attempting to smile. “Please take a seat.”

“No, thank you,” said Rex, slightly hoarse, gripping his helmet tightly under his arm.

Rabé’s chest felt like it was being crushed. She took a deep breath and let it out. “What was it you needed to talk to me about?” she asked, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t say what she was expecting.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. With sorrow in his eyes, he whispered, “It’s Fives.”

Rabé felt no jolt of surprise or horror. Just immediate, striking numbness.

Although he didn’t need to, Rex told her, “He’s dead.”

Rabé kept breathing, her mind totally blank, her vision going blurry at the edges. She lowered her gaze from Rex in an attempt to stop the dizziness. Dimly, she noticed that Eirtaé had rushed to her side and put her hands on her shoulders. The touch didn’t bring any comfort.

In an instant, Rabé’s mind went from blankness to chaos, a million different possible scenarios playing out at once. “How?” she managed to whisper.

Rex hesitated. “There’s a chip put inside every clone’s brain,” he explained. “His...malfunctioned. He went – he wasn’t himself anymore.” He paused, then resumed with increasing vehemence. “He killed a Jedi. He tried to kill the Chancellor –”

_To hell with the Jedi! To hell with the Chancellor!_ Rabé’s mind screamed, but her voice made no sound.

“General Skywalker and I tried to get him to surrender, but he – he couldn’t be reasoned with. And then he grabbed my blaster...” Rex’s voice trailed off.

“So someone killed him,” Rabé finished, raising her eyes to look at him again.

Rex lowered his gaze, unable to meet her eyes, and nodded.

Rabé closed her eyes and felt herself crumple. The tears came, and she cried and she shook her head, not in denial, but at the _goddamn unfairness_ of it – of Fives’ death, of Rex’s failure to save him, of putting chips in people’s brains in the first place – and at the horrifying realization that she wasn’t surprised at all. 

≈

Rabé was a cathartic crier. When Eirtaé, Rabé, and Sabé had heard the news of Cordé’s death, Rabé had sobbed freely, giving voice to what Eirtaé and Sabé couldn’t manage to express in their shock as they rallied around her. More than once Eirtaé had wondered if Rabé actually did it on purpose, giving her emotions voice because she knew her sisters could not.

It made Rabé’s reaction now even more horrifying. She hadn’t shown any emotion when Rex had told her, and even now that she was crying, she barely made a sound. Her eyes were squeezed shut over the tears spilling from them, her shoulders were shaking, and her mouth was thrown open, but the only noise that came out were intermittent choked sobs.

Rabé was also a toucher. Eirtaé was not, but she would do anything to ease her sister’s suffering. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around Rabé tightly. Rabé threw her hands off and curled in on herself, clutching her head as though the noise inside it would split her skull.

Eirtaé stared, and for a moment she was at a total loss. Then she rounded on Captain Rex. “Get out.”

The Captain still hadn’t raised his eyes from the floor. Now he looked at Eirtaé sorrowfully. “I –”

“No,” Eirtaé barked. “Get out!”

There was pain in his eyes as he did as he was told. Eirtaé was left to kneel in front of Rabé, hands hovering in front of her, knowing not to touch but not knowing how else to help, aware that for the first time she understood not one iota of what her sister was feeling. After a long time, Rabé’s silence turned into sobs, and she let Eirtaé hold her, and Eirtaé suspected it was as much for her sake as for Rabé’s.

When Sabé came home some time later, she didn’t have to ask what was wrong.

≈

Rabé didn’t hate Rex, although it felt good to blame someone so present and so full of guilt. She didn’t hate the Jedi or the Chancellor, although she would never trust them again. She didn’t even hate Commander Fox, the clone officer she found out had fired the killing shot and ripped Fives from her life forever.

She hated the whole goddamn system. The system that put chips in the heads of clones that were manufactured just to fight and die. The system that made people like Fives afraid to find out the truth. The system that trained brothers to kill each other if they didn’t follow orders. That was what had truly killed Fives.

So when Rabé entered Rex’s quarters without knocking, grim determination etched into her being and a surgical droid floating behind her, she thought, _This is for you, my love_.


End file.
